Scott had never seen a seizure before, but when his diminutive teammate collapsed in a spasmodic heap on the floor he knew it couldn't be good. Winters tried to restrain her and was repelled by the shield.
    "L'automaton, grab her!" Albert barked; his inhuman mental abilities had allowed him to brush off the attack's effects in seconds. Scott enveloped her, pressing close in against the telekinetic barrier, tried changing to gas to force his way through it but his particles were too massive. "Keep her from biting down on her tongue."
    "I can't—"
    "Show me her face." Eye to vacant eye now. "Calm, everything is calm—oh, just shut it down," he snapped, forcing obedience. The shield collapsed. She was still shaking violently, muscles locked in spasm. "We have to take her somewhere quickly where this can be dealt with."
    "Where?"
    "I do not know."
    "Lancaster," Winters put in. "They have facilities at Lancaster."
    "Get me a plane or something," Scott said.
    "I can do better than that." She dialed Hans. "We need you to get down here right now, Needle's in trouble, we need you to fly her down to Lancaster, outside of Harborview."
    Hans was there in under five minutes. They jury-rigged a carrier and strapped her down for the trip; he headed south at near maximum speed, judging how long he could maintain it against the distance.
    Winters called Lucky to fill her in.
    "Lucky, this is Winters, something's just happened to Needle."
    "What?" she asked, snapping to full alertness.
    "We went out to talk to that Javelin guy, and he sprayed something at her and she went into a fit. Promethean's flying her down to Lancaster right now. She got a dose of synthetic memory and something went wrong."
    "But—"
    "Get her over to the last guy," Scott interrupted urgently; Winters nodded.
    "You need—Scott's right, get over to Berault."
    "Um—ask Scott about Needle's memory makeup, they're going to need to know that," she told her, and hung up. Winters looked over at Scott.
    "She said to ask you about Needle's memory makeup?"
    "Uh, yeah. Um. We were trying to talk to you about this earlier. Let's, uh, go someplace." They found a room less occupied by security cameras.

    Lucky called Hans.
    "Hello?" he answered over the rush of air and plasma.
    "Do you know anything about Needle's background?"
    "No. She was an airline pilot."
    "No. Yes. No. She's a clone, she's got synthetic memory, just be careful what they do to her. Keep an eye on her at all times. They're trying to kill her." Paranoia sang through her mind, leaping effortlessly to the conclusion that this must all be part of the same plot they had encountered before. Protect the helpless. "If you have any questions, call me."
    "So what should I let them do?"
    "Let them fix whatever's wrong, just—make sure that they're aware." She hung up and headed for Berault's place, torn by fear and duty.

    "This is what we were trying to tell you, or, well, what Needle was trying not to," Scott finished.
    Winter's ran a hand through her hair. "Let me see if I've got this straight. She's a clone. Her memories are all implants, from this SysGen company."
    "Yes."
    "All right, I'll buy that," she decided. "Which is why whatever he hit her with is—"
    "Reacting poorly with the previously implanted memories."
    "Ye-ah." Obviously trying very hard to assimilate this.
    "She's about two, I think she said."
    "Two," Winters repeated. "Two people, or two years old?"
    "Two years old. Ten people. There were ten in the clone line." She looked at him with blank confusion. He started over at the beginning. "In 1981...."
    Albert left for a few moments, returned as Scott was finishing and said, "Could you call Lucky, let her know that the name of the woman who is going to be attacking is Lisa West. Try not to kill her, she appears to be a mother of two, precocious youths."
    Scott passed on the name and her description. And then there was little to do but wait.

    Hans hovered anxiously as the hospital people took over with practiced care, exhausted but keeping Lucky's somewhat incoherent warning in mind, watching them all closely as they moved Needle to an emergency room, checked her pulse (weak), set up their equipment. The EEG went wild.
    "What does that mean?" he asked.
    "It means she has a ton of brain activity right now," the apparent head doctor replied tersely, moving him aside. "Something is going on."
    "What are you going to do?"
    "All right, give me...." he took a filled hypodermic from one of the assistants, ignoring Promethean.
    "What are you doing? What is that?"
    The doctor gave him an exasperated glare. "This is something to keep her pulse rate up. Then I'm going to give her a neurotransmitter blocker to slow her brain activity down, because otherwise her circuits might burn out, if you want to put it in computer terminology. What happened to her?"
    Hans reluctantly moved aside and dialed Scott.
    "Yes?" the answer came immediately.
    "I have a gentleman here that you need to talk to." He handed the phone over.
    "Can I help you with something?" the robot inquired.
    "What happened to this woman?"
    "She got a face full of chemically encoded synthetic memory."
    "Shit. Why the extreme reaction?"
    "Previous exposure to the same chemical."
    "How much previous exposure?"
    "Significant previous exposure. I think they're just reacting badly to each other."
    "I think you may be right. This is the case up in Boston you asked us to look into, the chemicals? We just got the final tests back today, doesn't seem like it's going to matter now—oh shit she's going into arrest."
    The phone hit the floor.

    Lucky was trying to think "to" Chandler. Needle's in trouble. Needle's in trouble. She reached Berault's place and went through the outer doors without pausing. The elevator was on its way up. She sprinted up the stairs and beat it to the fourteenth floor with plenty of time to spare, could hear it coming and planted herself in front of the elevator doors as the cops tried to ask her what was going on.
    "Keep back," she ordered in a low growl.
    "We got a call, you sure this is it?"
    Ding.
    A neatly dressed brunette woman with glasses stood in the elevator, braced in a firing position. She was holding an Uzi. Where the hell did she get an Uzi?
    Lucky swung at her. Lisa brought a knee up toward Lucky's crotch, ducked the punch and moved around for a clear shot with the gun; her face was a fixed mask of rage. Lucky screamed her name; she jerked as if sleepwalking, and in that moment of distraction Lucky knocked the gun from her grip. It was only a moment before the alien face returned. She pulled out a tsai and launched herself at Lucky, who blocked the blow. No doubt in her mind that she was facing a skilled fighter. End this fast, she decided, and brought the staff around toward Lisa's head.
    She ducked it, did a forward roll and had made it past, broke into a run directly toward where Berault was hidden away. The cops had already pulled their guns.
    "Don't kill her!"
    Five shots. Only one hit her, in the upper thigh, spun her around. She collapsed, her expression resolving back into something that looked more natural before she lapsed into shock. The bleeding wasn't heavy enough to suggest that the artery had been hit; Lucky called for an ambulance and then Winters.
    "She's all right," Lucky reported.
    "Jesus. Thank god."
    "How's Needle?"
    "I dunno, we haven't heard yet."
    "I'll be down as soon as I can."
    "All right."
    She hung up and let out a half-relieved breath; one problem taken care of.
    "Thank you," Berault told her, coming out. "It seems I'm in your debt."
    "It's my job. Just glad you're all right."
    "Me, too. Why was she trying to kill me?" he asked in a wondering voice, looking down at the unconscious woman. Ambulance sirens approached.
    "I honestly don't know."
    Winters called her back a minute later, as the EMS types put Lisa on a stretcher and carried her out of the building.
    "We just got a call from Hans, he's down there."
    "Good."
    "They don't know quite what to do yet, but they're working on it."
    "They know she has synthetic memories?"
    "Hans called, had Scott explain it. You want to head down there?"
    "I don't know. Do you need me here?"
    She walked out of Berault's offices. Chandler was waiting for her outside; for some reason it didn't surprise her to see him there.
    "I don't know whether you can do any good or not," Winters told her. "But I can still understand why you'd want to go down there. We've got this situation under control. That was the last woman, according to the research Albert did, so there's no other assassins. If you feel you have to go down there, then go down there."
    "Thanks." She hung up.
    "What happened?" he asked. "I can tell you're really upset, and you've been sending me that Needle's in trouble, what's wrong?"
    "Somebody sprayed her with synthetic memory."
    He took an understanding breath. "All right."
    "Are you coming?"
    "I'm going to see what I can do to get us there faster. Phone?"
    She handed it over.
    He dialed swiftly. "Hi. Yeah, it's me. M-hm. I know we're even. I'm asking for a favor. I hate that chuckle. Okay. Yeah, I know. Thanks."
    She stepped around the corner a moment later.
    "That's a very good look on you," Yasmina smiled at Lucky's blankly shocked expression. "How are you? I'm glad to see you're doing well. Yes, Chandler, what do you need?" Her speech was languid and unhurried as ever.
    "I need to get down to Lancaster as soon as possible."
    "Both of you?"
    "Yes. It's an emergency."
    "Tell me why."
    "You realize this will mitigate the extent of the—"
    "Of course, but my curiosity is, as always, boundless."
    "Shall we explain on the way?" he suggested.
    She smiled, showing no teeth. "Through this door."
    They stepped into the apartment building, and out at the hospital at Lancaster University. Chandler explained to Yasmina what had happened; that chuckle sounded a couple of times.
    "Thank you," Lucky said softly.
    "You owe me nothing," Yasmina assured her, turned that lambent glance on the mage. "You, on the other hand..."
    "He owes you, I owe you," his familiar asserted firmly.
    "Oh, I can tell." That smile, again.

    Hans watched in unrelieved anxiety as the doctors shocked Needle's heart back into motion, all of it done in a very businesslike fashion.
    "OK, she's stable," Dr. Penzer announced at last, relaxing a little. "Stable. Her EEG is still off the scale, I don't know what we're going to be able to do about that. You said her mind is full of other synthetic memories?"
    "Yes."
    He pondered for a moment. "We need... fortunately, this is the place for it. Lucianne, go through the files, see what we have, anyone here right now who's a telepath."
    "Got one," the answer came quickly.
    "Call him, get him in here. Damn it, damn it," he muttered.
    Lucky and Chandler stepped through the door. Hans caught a brief glimpse of a pale-skinned, alien-looking woman whose smile curdled his blood before she turned and sauntered down the corridor, hips swaying.
    Lucky watched her, too, an odd expression on her face.
    "OK," the doctor said as he turned around, took in the new arrivals and shook his head. "I don't know how you got here and I'm not going to ask. Physically, she's stable. Mentally, I don't know what's happening, but whatever it was has stopped attacking her autonomic nervous system. Internal functions are fine. It's just... her brain, her memories are very screwed up."

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